The calm delights of an Autumn ride through Andalucía: Part Two

As I wheel my bicycle through the nearly empty streets of Úbeda, it is not yet nine on a Sunday morning and only just daylight.

I am up at this time because I have over a hundred kilometres to ride to the next town with accommodation. I am up at this time because there is over 1500m of climbing to go. And I am up at this time because I have just passed fifty and frankly my old body just won’t crank it out like it used to and I’d better get going pronto or I will miss dinner…

I am doing this in the name of ‘fun’. I am doing this in the name of ‘adventure’. And above all, I am doing this because I am deeply stupid and tight-fisted person who could have booked a rental car instead and stayed in bed two more hours….

I have to do this because I need to get to Granada the following day. I have to do this because it is the logical next step on a four-week circular trip by bike around Andalucía beginning and ending in Seville. I have to do this because I have set up a rhetorical structure based on a repetition of threes and I have run out of inspiration for the final phrase. So anyway…

This is Part Two of my… ahem, three part account of my trip round Andalucía in Autumn 2021. If you missed the other bits, then I think that there’s a link somewhere, I mean don’t ask me, I merely run this site, it’s all too techno for me, anyway, you’ll find it because you are super clever and cultured. And techno. I hope that you enjoy it and are inspired to take up comfortable bike touring and step outside your comfort zone.

Sunday 17 October: Úbeda – Benalúa: 103 km

Out at the crack of dawn, the town still largely asleep and deserted as I wheel my bike over the cobbles to the city walls of Úbeda, an autumnal coolness in the air.

Then down, down, down and out a steep track and onto an almost deserted main road, the hills blue and purple in the distance, serenely beautiful, the odd lonely car passing by. Chilled to the bone but determined to extract every last metre of advantage from my descent down the hills so painfully climbed two days earlier.

For twenty kilometres I descended and then climbed gently as the sun rose over the olive groves, with mountains ahead of me. There was a quite transcendent peace on that road. And it even smelt good, with the odd autumnal bonfire in a distant grove wafting towards me.

I stopped to put an extra layer of clothes and gloves on. Gone were the hot days along the Guadalquivir. I would happily have lingered but it was a day for distance.

I was nervous. I was outside my comfort zone. I had no choice. The route was locked in, accommodation booked at the other end. Nowhere else to go, but just get out there and do it… somehow…

I stopped briefly at the town of Jodiar but then off into the rocky formations of the Parque Natural de Sierra Magina, again cursing my poor understanding of rocks and geology. If only I could have understood the majesty in front of me.

In planning the route, I had the choice of the main road – the 401 – fast but possibly full of impatient and noisy cars, or a quieter road, but not clear whether it would mean more rutted tracks: bad enough on a short day but torture on a long day. Taking the former meant adding a few kilometres but reducing some of the steepness of the climb. So I took it and did not regret it. The relative narrowness of the roads combined with it being Sunday meant that the traffic never seriously annoyed me.

For forty long kilometres, I slogged up and down. I never got bored, with the landscape changing regularly: now narrow red cliffs, now wide open sandstone formations… It was only when I passed the sleepy farming town of Guadahortuna in early afternoon with sixty kilometres under my belt that the climbing got tedious: a tough long ascent of nearly 250m in seven kilometres to Torre Cardela, with the coolness of the dawn replaced by the now-familiar temperatures in the low thirties.

But after stopping briefly on the edges of Torre Cardela to have a much needed ‘lunch’, I came across that most magnificent of things: a freshly retarmacked road, so fresh that there were no lane markings and it was still black with youth, slithering mostly downhill over twelve luxuriant kilometres with almost no one: car or cyclist, passing me. And through a wondrous almost lunar landscape baked almost white in the afternoon sun.

I was out in the middle of nowhere and I was loving it.

And after riding through the hardscrabble town of Pedro Martinez, another beautiful bit of riding, a glorious descent into the valley of the Rio Fardes before turning off onto a quieter road towards Benalúa. Just after the turning, I passed a forest of gleaming yellow trees in the late afternoon sunlight. It was a day in which autumn was there for the first time.

But those last ten kilometres were a little too much for my tired body and by the time I reached my accommodation at the Cuevas Grande: decorated caves in the hillside, I was absolutely sapped.

Luckily, dinner was onsite: partridge salad followed by lomo baja de ternita lecha Gallega. Not even the presence of a boorish table of German bike tourists could disturb my good mood. I pitied them: everyone served the same thing and no chance for them to absorb the local atmosphere or culture. So much better to experience it all to myself.

So a day that I had feared and worried that would be too much for me turned into something rather marvellous. A wonder of colours and landscapes.

I was exhausted but it was worth it. Who needs comfort zones when there is so much more to discover?

Monday 18 October: Benalúa – Granada: 56km

Another glorious morning. After breakfast, I went for a gentle warm-up walk and ended up on a small rise – a mirador – with a 360 degree view of the surrounding area as the sun rose and the landscape came to life. In the distance, dogs barking furiously, birds tweeting, cockerels clucking and geese cackling. It was almost a battle of the banjos between the dogs and the cocks. And then a donkey stole the show with a plaintive cry…

And the scenery was a treat: red rocky buttes and plateaux purple in the distance, a sense of space that made me feel that I was almost out in Idaho or Montana. But recognisably European all the same: small whitewashed farms, olives, lemons and oranges.

How wonderful to be here and to have done it under my own steam…

I took my own sweet time. Not for me the rigid 9am departures of the guided tour. More the luxury of the leisurely kit faff.

It was an up and down trip: literally… Up for the first 26 kilometres and down for the next 26.

But what a splendid ride. As I crawled up the hill, I bathed in the first autumnal leaves, fires in people’s homes, stark golden canyons and then up and away from La Peza on a slow a twisty rise – rarely more than 6% and usually a steady 1-3% – to the Puerto de Los Blancares, the sweet smell of pine, the regular shade of trees and the cliffs around me, and the regular sound of babbling brooks and rustling leaves. In that long two hours or so of climbing, hardly a car passed, and my only ‘company’ was a female rider on a road bike who calmly eased past my lumbering body and shot off into the distance before returning back down the hill later with a cheery wave. The landscape was a balm to the soul and again I felt very lucky indeed.

The way down was also beautiful, gently skimming down and predictably somewhat faster… But my brakes felt soft and I was having to put more and more effort into them, so my hands and wrists were somewhat shaky by the end. It took the shine off what should have been a great reward for my quiet – and monumentally slow – exertions.

And then out into the valley of the Rio Genil and the usual long grind through city streets to my accommodation in Granada, only temporarily pulling away from it all up a steep hill and then down again through narrow twisty lanes and then up a savagely cobbled hill to the… oh crap, I’m not attempting to ride that… So off I came and with reason as the road up to my accommodation veered up at nearly 20%… on irregular cobbles. So up and up I walked.

But the views from my rented apartment were worth it, especially the rooftop view that I could access, sitting and having a quiet evening beer and crisps with views over to the Alhambra and down into the city. Magnificent.

Tuesday 19 October: Granada – rest day

Ordinarily I would not take another rest day so soon, but after a solid 160 km and nearly 2400 m of climbing, and well, it was a day in Granada. My third visit, but still good to be back.

But first I had business to attend to: taking my clothes to an automatic laundromat and then wheeling my bike down that steep, steep hill and over to another bike shop – Pancracio Bicis – to look at the brakes. Not only did the guy take my bike straightaway, but within an hour, he texted me to come back. New brake pads fitted and good thing that I had come to see him: he showed me the old ones and they were completely worn through. This super nice guy only charged me cost of the pads and waved me on my way, refusing costs for the labour… Another lucky escape. He asks about my trip. I tell him that I am heading up into the Alpujarras. He looks me up and down and says “Difficil pero poco a poco… Poco a poco…”. Again, I marvelled at the quiet warmness of the Spanish.

But again, I forgot to ask about that squeaky seat and the mysterious bolt… Still, everything seemed to be working and I was in good shape for the mountains, so why worry?

All done, I had a super meal of dogfish in adobo sauce on another splendid sunny day before heading over to the famed Alhambra, the palace of Nasrid kings. Wisely I had booked a slot online to see the Palacios Nazaries.

This was not my first time. Over a decade before, I had had a wonderful time wandering about the place and admiring the exquisite architecture and Moorish carvings. I didn’t exactly have the place to myself but did recall having the time and opportunity to wander slowly and take in its magnificence.

But this time we were funnelled in, in twenty-minute slots, and crowded, all social distancing rules out the window and the usual mass of idiots either not wearing a face mask or doing that childish thing of having it half on half off, and a persistent feeling of rush, rush, rush amid the crowds. It made for an experience both scary and underwhelming, with little opportunity to appreciate the splendour and sophistication, and this was a Tuesday… It was so massively different from the unhurried reflection of the mezquita in Cordoba.

This was not the only area crowded with tourists: the Calle Elvira at the bottom of the hill was a mass of cheap restaurants, vaping shops, and shops selling carpets and cheap tatty fabrics. I missed the Granada of old, the one that I had wandered about in with hardly a care in the world.

Wednesday 20 October: Granada – Órgiva: 58 km

It was with some relief that I walked my bike back down that horribly brutal cobbled hill – but my, how the brakes grip nicely – and set off across town and out through the commuter belt to the hills of the Sierra Nevada.

But not without the usual rumbling presence of more sleeping fascist policemen to trouble the wheels of my bike… 

For the first half of the ride, I was often close to the A-44 motorway, but it rather complemented the arid starkness of the valley and the purple mountains of the Sierra Nevada to my left, and did not bother me: granite bike tracks pulsing up and down with the odd horror of a short and steep climb.

After a brief stop in the town of Padul, where I heard English voices and parked my bike opposite a butcher’s shop with a vending machine for cured meat – embutidos – there was an annoying and rather tiresome drag along a busy road, the N323a to Dúrcal. My legs felt sluggish and I was hot and sweaty.

After Dúrcal though, there was a glorious descent down and over the dry basin of the Rio Torrente and then cutting through and up to the Puente de Tablate – a magnificent modern metallic white bridge – followed by a slow snaking ascent up into the hills.

The weather was sunny but much cooler, the traffic not too busy, and the gradient quietly forgiving. I rather enjoyed my slow rise up and past wind turbines and along the contours marking the start of the Alpujarras. I felt that I was rising up and above everything, though a look at the height map showed that even at the top of the hill, I was still lower than Granada.

I passed through Lanjarón, proclaiming itself the gateway to the Alpujarras and cruised gently downhill to the town of Órgiva, my stop for the night.

I wasn’t expecting much, but Órgiva still disappointed: an ugly market town which seemed to have no redeeming sights but plenty of hardware stores and plenty of Brits out drinking at 5 in the evening. Even the graffiti and beggars were British. I came across one old man rattling his tin for coins. Poor sod.

For whatever reason, Wednesday was clearly not the night to visit with most of its very few restaurants shut. So on the grounds that sometimes it is better to bank something, I opted for the local pizzeria, sitting outside in a beer garden gated off from the main road.

Surrounded by Brits. Across from me, there was a large gathering for what was clearly a birthday party for a man in his forties with silvered hair and a long brown leather overcoat with felt lining. There were a few Spanish wives and husbands scattered around, but mostly it was Brits.

Who were these people? What were they doing here and how were they making their money? I had been reading Chris Stewart’s wonderful “Driving over lemons”: a memoir of setting up a sheep farm not far from here, but even Stewart admits that he only survived from the profits from the book. Other lives…

And I learnt a valuable lesson that night. When ordering a pizza in a country town outside Italy, never ever go for the intriguing item on the menu. I ordered an intriguing pizza promising ham, bacon and ‘verduritas’ and was rewarded with over-salty ham and bacon, and overcooked carrots and courgettes, two vegetables that should never be allowed anywhere near a pizza…

But my B&B, up the hill from the main area, was a quiet treat. The furnishings were basic and there was no A/C – though none was needed, but the owner was welcoming – a sort of Spanish Miriam Margolyes if that makes sense – and the place was a shady oasis with a pool and fountain. Wonderfully peaceful.

Thursday 21 October: Órgiva – Trevélez: 36 km

After a night of having to drink, drink, drink to deal with the salty after-effects of that awful pizza, I woke to another splendid blue sky and a delightful breakfast out on the terrace of the B&B. Juice, coffee, cake, yogurt, fruit: bliss.

As I say my goodbyes to the owner, she asks me where I am heading. “Trevélez”, I say, indicating the town only 36km but uphill all the way. “Loco” she says, shaking her head with a bemused smile. “Absolutamente loco”, she adds for emphasis.

And I admit to trepidation. Together with the big stint to Benalúa on Sunday, this will be one of the toughest rides: its shortness meaning that I am packing a steady 4-5% incline the whole way.  Am I taking on too much?  Loco indeed….

But again the comfort zone is firmly closed and accommodation at the other end waiting for me. So there is no choice.

In early November 2014, I had driven up the Alpujarras, passing through Lanjarón and Trevélez and had even taken the time to paint a rather poor watercolour of Trevélez in the autumn light, before staying halfway down the valley. Most of my drive had been in rain and wind, and indeed the next morning after a belter of a storm, I woke to find that most of the hotel had been flooded… I resolved to come back and see it at slower pace and in better weather…

I definitely managed the slower pace, working my way along the sinuous inclines at my own sweet time and snail-like pace and swapping for water and chocolate whenever the mood took me.

And let me let you in on something: I enjoyed nearly every single damn minute… It was FABULOUS.

The sun was out but it was a gentle reassuring warmth, only rising to mid-20s and with a refreshing gentle breeze. Perfect cycling weather. I worked my way up to and past white town after white town. And the views were both stunning and changing with every new hundred metres of altitude.

The climb might have been a long one, but it was rarely steep apart from a brief section into and out of Pampaneira. The traffic never bothered me or was frustrated by me, and the flies… Ok, the flies were really annoying as ever.

Poco a poco, poco a poco, each successive climb taking me way up. One of the beauties of a ride like this is that houses or hills that loom above you at one point become the small specks that you look down on later.

And there was the odd delightful oddity: the signs to a Buddhist temple, the bus stop on a hilly outcrop with post boxes testifying to the arrival of the British and Germans, a Swiss man in a camper van playing calming music.

There are lulls of course, lines and lines of trees, times to just put your head down and grind out the climbs. With every kilometre and town, the road becomes less and less busy. 5km out of Trevélez, the road opens out into a wide mountain valley with magnificent views of bare hills dotted with white houses.

And then, a final steep rise and along into the sleepy town of Trevélez, greeted only by a barking dog. How amazing to think that I have climbed nearly 1400m so quickly and all under my own slow steam. My average speed is a risible 9.6 kph but I have done it. How magnificent! I gained so much more than I did when I drove up, able to savour each turn and able to stop when and where I wanted. Things that can scare us in the abstract turn out to be rather wonderful when we put aside our fears and force ourselves to carry them out. Comfort zones are for boring people.

I settle into my rather basic hotel room for an afternoon nap before enjoying a wonderful sunset from my balcony, looking down the valley and savouring a restorative glass of beer and wonder of wonders, salt n’ vinegar crisps before heading over to a local restaurant for a very filling meal, the place full with British, French and German hikers, all sensibly kitted out.

Friday 22 October: Trevélez: day off

A day off in the hills to do a hike.

Let’s be frank about this: with my casual city walking shoes, easily foldable rain jacket and drawstring bag on my back, I was no match for the click-click brigade, marching uphill with their stiff rucksacks, sticks, waterproofs and other top grade hiking paraphernalia.

But I did not care. I set off gently on what was supposed to be an equally gentle loop around a local hill but turned out to right to the top of said local hill.

Still, it was worth it for the peace and views. I hardly saw a soul and could breathe in and admire its majesty.

Though slightly marred when having just descended halfway down the other side, I had to turn back because the route was blocked off with wire. But it was good to breathe the mountain air and strain my legs in a different way.

And it gave me an excuse for another nice supper in another small restaurant: gazpacho followed by migas con longaniza: meat and beans on a kind of couscous.

I enjoyed Trevélez: with its narrow pedestrian streets running higgledy-piggledy up and down the hill. It had a convivial atmosphere, locals stopping each other for a chat, and a wonderful quietness. I wasn’t quite off the beaten track, but I was on a much less visited section, and the tourists there were there to appreciate the calmness and nature. Even with their click-click sticks.

In the late afternoon, the first rain of my trip, after two weeks, a thunderstorm rolling through the hills. Even that had a beauty to it, clearing the air marvellously. I sat on my balcony until the rain forced me in.

Saturday 23 October: Trevélez – Salobreña: 79km

What goes up, must – usually – come down, so it was finally time for me to reap the benefits of all that climbing and descend to the sea. Amazing how close it was yet here I was up in the mountains.

I was a big contrast with the other bike tourists staying at the hotel, a pair of Germans who set off punctually at 9.30 with front and rear bags, backpacks and sleeping bags held in place with bungee cords and a huge handlebar bag, and dressed in the same gear that they had arrived in: baggy shirts and shorts, sandals and bandannas.

I rolled out an hour later after my usual morning kit faff, a vision in clean lycra, fleece, luminous rain jacket, leggings and gloves, but with three tightly packed rear panniers and a small handlebar bag, knowing that I had plenty of time to reach my booked destination. The benefits of comfy bike touring!

And another wondrous – if chilly – morning: the first snows on the mountains above the town, the autumn colours bright and sharp, and the regular smell of pine cones or burning log fires. I was expecting a gentle cruise downhill but to my surprise, for the first four kilometres, I was actually going uphill and at a constant 5-9%: hard going for legs which were feeling the after-effects of my mountain walk.

But the scenery was amazing: the mountains of the Sierra Nevada speckled with white flecks of lonely farm houses. Having read Chris Stewart’s “Driving over lemons” on farming in the area and Gerald Brenan’s earlier book “South from Granada” had given me a real sense of the hard lives of these farmers.

Having designed two possible routes, I ended up taking a third, descending on the other side of the canyon that I had come up, and then turning off down to Torvizcón via Almegijar, mostly on a staggeringly beautiful descent marred only by one impatient driver yelling at me. Just before Torvizcón, I climbed up a stiff 100m hill and then turned back on to the main road and more of an up and down affair, descending opposite Órgiva and then an artificial lake created by damming the Rio Guadalfeo. In truth, it was a rather busy road, with successive rallies of first convertibles, then Audis and then finally motorbikes storming past smugly. On roads like those, you have to keep relatively tight into the side of the road and listen out for passing cars. I was glad when my GPS pushed me off the main road leading to Vélez de Benaudalla, a marvellously Moorish name.

It was about this time that Bob the Wahoo, my faithful GPS and star of many videos, started to go wrong on me. I had had him for four years and many adventures in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Albania, the Baltics, Italy, and many other countries. He had guided me – often grumpily, beeping loudly at my mistakes – through Tallinn, Paris, Tirana, Milan and now Seville and through more than one torrential downpour.

But as I left the main road, and punched the right-hand side button to change the page, Bob broke on me, the button no longer responsive. And in trying to fix him, a glitch appeared on his main screen. This was somewhat trying as my iPhone was also dying a death, its battery draining at an enormous rate when not in flight mode. Luckily, he was showing the map page, so I was able to navigate, but it was worrying.

So on I rode with my wounded pal, the landscape gradually flattening out but still undulating gently as I followed what was largely a service road for the A44 motorway, but largely kept the motorway out of view, a long slow rise up over the final hills separating me from the Mediterranean, and the wind picking up: a tell-tale sign of the coast.

Then through a short tunnel and my first view of the Med. How exciting! How incredible.

I slowly slalomed down to the outskirts of Motril before hitting the coast at El Varadero: the sandy palms so different to the clay pines of only a few hours ago. Back in tourist land…

I checked into my rather lacklustre but fine hotel in Salobreña, and took the reluctant decision to prise Bob’s plastic panelling open with a knife, seeing that at least the electronics were still basically responsive even if the button was broken.

And then off to the beach and the Costa del Sol at last: apartment blocks, sea smells, squabbling families, cynical locals and grey sand.

It was lovely to hear the waves – always a sound that takes me back to my childhood by the coast – but I was already missing the hills. It all felt a bit of an anti-climax. A whopping 2,360 metres of descent but also 830m of climbing. Not that I notice these things.

Sunday 24 October: Salobreña – Nerja: 36 km

Another crisp beautiful morning and what I hoped would be a short but beautiful ride along the coast. I warmed up by walking over to the Peñon de Salobreña, a big rock sticking out from the coast, looking back at the town and its castle.

It certainly started well, the road passing under the towering presence of the castle and then following quiet roads to the small town of Caleta La Guardia before a brutish climb up onto the main road: the N-340.

But even on a Sunday morning, the N-340 was unpleasant to ride along: a narrow hard shoulder and a mass of traffic and a constant up and down, sometimes giving decent views of the sea and often not. It was all rather unsatisfying and my energy just wasn’t there. Some days you just don’t feel up to it and this was one of those days.

I dropped down to Almuñécar to pay a short homage to the writer Laurie Lee who had stayed in the town at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and writes memorably about the tension and savagery of it in his excellent memoir: “As I walked out one midsummer morning” and who then revisited the town in the 1950s under the Franco regime to find it vastly changed but haunted by ghosts of the past.

Calling it “Castillo” but admitting after Spain had become a democracy again that it was really Almuñécar, he writes:

“I saw this poverty-stricken Castillo lift its head out of the smoke and clamour of those days and feed, for a brief hour, on sharp hot fantasies of a better world. I had come back now, as I knew I must one day, to see what the years had done to the town. I found it starved and humiliated, the glory gone, and the workers of the sugar fields and the sea hopeless and silent.”

I sat for a few minutes by the dilapidated monument to him in the town, but the truth was that in the rush to mass tourism, little seemed to remain of what he had seen on either occasion apart from the castle up on the hill. Nearly 80 years had passed. Nature is eternal. Mankind less so.

And then another savage ride uphill and back onto that busy main road. There were a few tunnels but all well lit and with the booming traffic giving me decent space. With tunnels, I stop before the entrance, put my lights and reflective jacket on, wait for a clearance in the traffic, and then pedal like Mark Cavendish trying to get one last Tour de France win…

On one slow hot hill, I passed another bike tourist, a lady walking her bike up a not too steep part of the hill. I offered help but she insisted that she just wanted to walk the bike.

About an hour later, I stopped to admire a coastal view in a small parking area and after a while, she pulled in. She was from Freiburg and had ridden from some part of the Italian Alps, nearly always along the coast. “I am tired of the hills…” “I am 66 years old. I sold my house thirteen years ago and I have been travelling since.” She was not travelling continuously but taking long trips, camping most of the way, though without front panniers, and looking to rent somewhere for the winter. She had heard that Nerja would be an option.

I found her an odd mixture of improvisation and organisation. She was on her own and proud of it but seemed wrapped in her own thoughts and showed no interest in anything else.

I often wonder about the strange psychology of the long-distance cyclist, the people who set off for years on end, eking out their budgets by sleeping wild or in the houses of strangers, giving English lessons or stopping here and there to do freelance IT work.

When bike touring, you come across them from time to time: dusty bikes fully laden with battered and sun-faded bags strapped on with bungee cord and all manner of improvisation. They are usually cheery souls, halfway to somewhere… and maybe from there, they will go on to somewhere else… Some though seem completely miserable, trying to find themselves or stuck in a challenge that has ceased to be pleasurable. Carried by the wind direction, chance encounters with other travellers, or most likely visa requirements or difficulties.

Over the years, I have read a number of their memoirs: Alastair Humphreys, Rob Lilwall, Anne Mustoe, Tom Allen, and most recently Stephen Fabes: a vicarious pleasure from reading about them battling winds, diarrhoea, dogs and malevolent locals throwing stones or trying to rob them, but also from their descriptions of the highs of touring: not just the landscapes but more often the sheer human kindness that is opened to a travelling cyclist.

Towards the end of Fabes’ book: “Signs of Life“, he stays with Heinz Stücke, who spent 51 years on a bike, travelling the world many times over before finally heading back to his home town. (There’s a trailer for the documentary about him below.). Fabes arrives in awe, after a mere six years on a bike himself, but ends up arguing with Stücke over immigration. Fabes reflects on the encounter as he pedals away and home.

“How worldly can you be, I wondered, alone, always moving, never setting down roots? Perhaps living in a community, with all its nuance and diversity, its discordance and compromise, can more powerfully compose a world view (or a just one, anyway) than watching a world as a stranger does, with no stake in anything. […] The last years had been, for the most part, an exercise in non-participation. I hadn’t improved any given slice of the world, but had nosed around, voyeuristically at times, and in my lowest moments I wondered if it had all been a vain search for self-worth and purpose. Perhaps purpose, at least, lay closer to home.“

And so we parted ways, and I never saw her again, another slice of life, a brief view into another soul, searching for meaning in life. Like most of us.

And I reflected on her and continue reflecting. Perhaps purpose can be shared: our work life can give us purpose, but so can our personal life, including our leisure time. These holidays give both pleasure and motivation: up close insights into other worlds for a brief and enriching spell, nourishing us and balancing us before we resume our wider purpose at home.

Then the final stretch into Nerja, a town that I have visited a few times before, and into another furnished apartment. My host, a charming and sincere man in his late fifties who had survived cancer and before the pandemic had ridden all the way to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. Another slice of life, another person’s soul, another bit of perspective…

Monday 25 October and Tuesday 26 October: Nerja: rest days

When planning the trip, I had realised that I would have a few spare days but not enough to work in the delights of Cádiz or Gibraltar. So I decided to give myself a rest by the sea and to rest up in Nerja, a town I had visited three times before, the last time in 2014.

I remembered it as a town with a low-key rusty charm: touristed but not overly touristy. A place of Spanish bars but English pubs and the odd German menu. A town moreover in a beautiful setting, jutting out into the bay, most notably with Balcón de Europa, a parade laid on top of a rock like some seaside pier. I had fond memories of gentle breakfasts in a quiet café looking out onto the sea, of happy and not too busy beaches, and most of all, leaning out on a starry night at the edge of the Balcón, with the sea surging below me.

But things change. Returning seven years later, the place had gone very upmarket and was a hive of building. Indeed my lovely apartment refuge was not the place to rest up as from eight in the morning until sunset, there was the constant sound of drilling and jackhammering from a nearby street. Indeed that jackhammering seemed to permeate the whole town, with swish new apartments sprouting up in glass and white plaster.

The centre was full of pizzerias, Italian restaurants, and at least twenty Indian restaurants. Gone was my little café, replaced by an upmarket Italian. But at least there was still ice cream to be had at the edge of the Balcón de Europa, and after dinner, it was relatively deserted.

And the place was absolutely teeming with tourists. I had seemingly arrived at the confluence of many half-term holidays and the streets were full of voices in English, German, and Scandinavian tongues, and each coming to get away from the COVID misery, and letting down their guards as though the virus would hardly attack people who were on holiday…

For me, infection with the virus would be a disaster even with my double vaccination. What would I do? Where would I go? I could hardly hop on a plane but nor could I rent out a place. “Hi, I am suffering from COVID. Mind if I bunk down here for two weeks?”. So I skulked in the shadows and quiet streets, my mask glued to my face. It was the opposite of relaxing.

I tried to make the most and sit on the beach. I found a relatively secluded spot on the Playa Carabeillo, a pebbly beach just off the main beach, the Playa Burriana. I did my usual painstaking clothes removal act with a mini-towel and then splashed about in the water for a bit. It was chilly but invigorating, but even there I could not escape from the situation. As I swam around, I spotted an abandoned face mask floating in the water, like a lonely jellyfish… Looking back to shore, I saw equally lonely Africans walking along the beach, hawking handbags and saris, lottery ticket sellers, couples trying to find a discreet spot on the beach and an old man walking from one end of the beach to the other and back again.

But at least on my second evening, with sun setting, the crowds had gone and I had the place nearly to myself, on an in-tide that was nearly full, the waves crashing joyously around me and the glorious orange, ochre and green of the cliffs in the distance. Quite glorious.

And I ate well over my three nights: puntillas, boquerones al limon, clams in their shell, padrón peppers, grilled sardines, steak with chips and a divine tomato and avocado salad. And more ice cream. For purely medicinal purposes.

But after two days off the bike, I was keen to get going, to see more, to explore more, to.. I don’t know, smell more? Yes, that kind of works.

I would have to find a permanent solution to my poor broken down GPS, Bob the Wahoo. I would have to find a permanent solution to the mysterious creaking noise still coming from my bike seat and the equally mysterious bolt that dropped out some four hundred kilometres ago. And I would have to accept my poor – but strangely attractive and incredibly blonde-haired for my relative age – body for what it is and learn to love it. Creaks and all.

So on to Málaga… To find out what happened next, read Part Three…